


Normal

by cosmogyrals



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-11
Updated: 2013-03-11
Packaged: 2017-12-04 23:32:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/716309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmogyrals/pseuds/cosmogyrals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are times when she wishes desperately to be normal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Normal

_"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal." - Albert Camus_

Martha used to know what normal was like. She used to _be_ normal - just another med student, virtually indistinguishable from every other student in London. And she'd liked her life - maybe keeping the peace among members of her family got a little hectic at times, but it wasn't that bad, and she loved them all, and she enjoyed what she did. She was just plain, ordinary Martha Jones.

And then she went to the moon, met Time Lords and Plasmavores and Judoon, saw the Earth from space. That night, at Leo's birthday party, she couldn't stop thinking about it - but she still thought that life would be back to normal the next morning.

And then he beckoned to her from an alley, and all the normality and mundanity disappeared from her life.

There are times when she wishes desperately to be normal. Times that she wishes she'd never met the Doctor, never travelled with him, never fallen in love with him. Times when she blames herself for everything that's happened to her family, when the darkness in her soul whispers to her that Professor Yana would have died there, in the cold darkness of Malcaissaro, if she had just stayed at home and led a normal life. She would never have discovered the depths of despair, never known what it was like to be minutes away from her own death and light-years away from everybody she's known and loved, never walked the earth by herself.

But she never would have seen the stars, never met Shakespeare or sat in an alley on New Earth and listened to tales of a long-dead planet and a once-proud people. She wouldn't have infiltrated the Pharm or solved the mystery at the LHC or been there to help defeat the Sontarans. She wouldn't have had decided to use the Osterhagen Device to save - and condemn - humanity.

Nowadays, normal is simply a mask she wears around other people, people who can never know the truth about where she's been and what she's done. Her mask hides her emotions, smooths over the troubled surface of her mind so as not to worry her friends and family unnecessarily. After all, she has to be normal for them. And maybe, if she pretends hard enough, things will actually _be_ normal. But now that she's seen abnormal, all the horrors and wonders it has to offer, she's not sure if she'd ever be able to go back, anyway. She's not sure if she'd want to.


End file.
